Adsense is my main business.. here are the answers to your questions.
1. How to make the maximum amount of cash with adsense and stay in google guidelines so they pay me?
The key with Adsense is: blending in the ads to go along with your content. A good trick is, make the background color of your ads the same as the background color of your page. Also, utilize Google's "heat map" page, which shows you the best place to put ads on your pages. It works, trust me.
2. How much money do you average a month hosting the adsense banners??
( I know this varies because certain topics pay better)
Lots. Not saying how much though

Enough to pay the bills though, if my bills weren't already getting paid by being a poker affiliate.
3. Do payments show up on time?
Yes, no problems with payments.
4. Have you had any problems with adsense or with google not wanting to pay?
Not one problem.
5. What does google want to see as far as the traffic that gets to my site? Do they want a shit load of visitors to match my clicks or a low amount of traffic and a high click through ratio???
Google wants its advertisers to make money, so they want people clicking through on your ads that actually want the products / services the advertisers are advertising. It's as simple as that. Google has "smart pricing" which means, if people who are clicking through aren't buying, the amount you get paid per click goes down.